Four seasons in and The Walking Dead lurches on more tenaciously than ever. The premiere of the fourth season averaged 16.1 million viewers in the US, making it the highest-rated episode in the history of basic cable.
Andrew Lincoln, left, as Rick Grimes and Norman Reedus as Daryl Dixon in The Walking Dead Season 5.
The premise of this award-winning show, which has set off a global craze, is simple. Sheriff Rick Grimes wakes up from a coma and finds himself in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. He stumbles out of the hospital, finding row and row of corpses. The world is no longer. But he soon finds his wife Lori and son Carl, along with his ex-partner Shane and a whole range of survivors who make up the post-apocalyptic society we follow, who contemplate the difference between surviving and living.
"You find a man who doesn't know comfort anymore," says actor Andrew Lincoln of his character, Rick, after four seasons. The gang of survivors, which diminishes and expands throughout the series, moves around rural Georgia, meeting other survivors, from a lone scientist at the Center for Disease Control (that's the one where Ebola is currently being studied), to a deluded town leader who conducts zombie gladiator fights to boost the town's morale.
The special effects and make-up is spectacular — writhing corpses, torn stomachs, faces peeled apart. The show is a balance between lush, tranquil fields and forests and mud and gore. It's incredible how quickly you get used to watching heads split open and guts exploding. But the gore does keep topping itself, shocking viewers at every turn. The past seasons saw a C-section with a knife in a prison where the survivors reside, a rotting zombie at a bottom of a well, zombies raining through the ceiling and fish tanks full of zombie heads.
"A friend of mine who's a director came to stay with me in Georgia recently," says Norman Reedus, who plays Daryl. "He's studying autopsies right now. He was in a doctor's office while they were doing an autopsy and he was showing me pictures of the autopsy, going, 'Oh my God', and I was like, 'Yeah, yeah'. I was barely fazed, which is crazy, because they were some gnarly pictures."
But beyond zombie-killing survival-instinct action, the questions remain: How much torture and suffering can a person take? What keeps him going? What keeps him human?
"It seems we've pretty much been through everything we could go through," says Lauren Cohan (Maggie). The gang has been forced to kill loved ones who've turned, to kill other human beings who are threats. They've learned that other survivors may be more dangerous than the flesh-eating zombies. And that's what the show is fundamentally about — people and relationships.
"These people. They find a family. They find purpose, find things to live for," Steven Yeun (Glenn) points out, adding that the team of actors are getting closer in real life as their characters are getting closer in the show.
"I do think I'd be like Maggie if I were to exist in that world," says Cohan. "I feel like we've consistently tried to find the highest road. We're still surviving because we've stuck together. It's wrecked sometimes by losing grip or by external forces, but I think as a group, everyone really, has each other's back. I think that's the essence of survival."
Each character transforms in the face of disaster.
Chandler Rigg, who plays Carl, was only 10 years old when the show started. His voice has very much deepened since.
Last season also saw Rick calling Daryl "a brother".
"In the zombie world, Daryl finds himself forging relationships for the first time. His emotional world is growing," says Reedus.
Played by Melissa McBride, Carol, who's been upped from a minor character to a regular player, has grown from a submissive woman who stood behind her abusive husband into a character as morally complex as the show's alleged hero Rick.
"I have been thinking about her shoes," says McBride. "Her shoes in season one were these loose open huarache sandals. You could see her toes and things would stick to her feet. She would sweat in them and it was like walking on baloney.
She would carry Sofia to the RV when the zombies came up and she would pick up Sofia, who weighs like 20kg, and we had to do this scene over and over, in these shoes.
And now she's wearing some very wonderful boots. They come up to the knees and nothing can penetrate."
"The characters keep growing and the series keep growing," adds Reedus.
"I've done lots of movies and I've played the cool guy for a long time. But really, I'd play Daryl till I'm 90," he says, after casually mentioning that he was injured while filming the upcoming fifth season, by being hit in the face by a spinal cord.
When asked what the most badass thing she's done in the show, Cohan recalls it was filmed early on a Wednesday morning. She couldn't reveal the happenings in the next season, but she discloses she's started having zombie dreams.
"In the dream, I'm walking through a dilapidated Paris. The cafés were falling apart and everything has burned out. There was this beautiful spiral staircase in front of me. I walked up and a glistening bride is sitting in a corner wearing a really cute hat and writing and smoking a cigarette. And I say, I'm like 'Yo what are you doing?'. She says, 'What do you mean?'. And I say, 'Outside, there's nothing. There are just dead people'. And nobody believes me. I'm going crazy running around trying to tell people."
"But that only started this year. So the recipe is that it takes five seasons to get this way," she adds.
The fifth season of The Walking Dead starts on Oct 13 on Fox International Channel.
